on being strong, on love, and on this drama in general

This drama started out good. The cinematography was great, the CGI effects were at least not terrible, and everything the actors did made sense. It was heartbreaking seeing the first of many conflicts form between the two main leads who shared such innocent and beautiful love for each other. If I had to summarize the main reason for nearly all these conflicts and misunderstandings, it would be:

"If I emotionally hurt this person, they won't care for me anymore and will leave this place. This way, they won't be further hurt by forces I can't control. This way, they won't die."

This is a common trope that plays out in wuxia/xianxia c-dramas, with the characters thinking that the worse thing that could happen to anyone is for them to die. It's considered the "noble" thing for them to do. The question is, then, if it's so "noble" for them to do, why does it cause so many conflicts and misunderstandings? When the female lead first played out this trope, I could understand. They were both young, and the world was against them. When it happened again, and again, and again, I quickly got tired of how the male lead (Bo Wang) kept on humiliating, insulting and degrading the female lead all in the name of playing the noble sacrificial idiot. All the insults he hurled at her were apparently supposed to make her become stronger, but to me it just left an bad taste in my mouth. Bo Wang was supposed to love her. He was not supposed to make her cry and make her feel inadequate for being gentle and compassionate and warm. His belief that being strong meant being heartless and cruel is completely wrong and I hope the viewers out their don't come out of the drama thinking they want to fit these standards of being "strong". Being heartless and cold is not strength. It just simply means you don't have the ability to be vulnerable -- and to be vulnerable requires much more courage and bravery than boxing yourself up in a cold detached armor does.

Sure, maybe this part of Bo Wang's personality can be explained by being raised by wolves, or being put through torture by the king to become a killing machine. Maybe some people can say that his loyalty to his fellow soldiers and brothers meant he wasn't completely heartless. Maybe his strength on the battlefield means he gets a free pass at treating the woman he was supposed to love the most in the world horribly. I don't know about you, but the way he does whatever the emperor wants him to do even though his heart may be telling him to do the exact opposite just tells me that he's a cowardly man who's afraid to stand up for what matters the most to him.

Now, on to the acting. I haven't seen Wang Dalu in any of his dramas in the past, so I don't know if this is his usual level of acting. In the first arc, I fully believed him when he played the role of the naive wolf boy. He had a childish gaze and a genuine smile that melted my heart. It was when he became Bo Wang that I became confused by his acting. I sometimes couldn't understand why he would have a particular expression on his face. Was he trying to be Bo Wang playing the wolf boy? Or was he the wolf boy coming out from Bo Wang's inner heart and trying to show that oh, Bo Wang does have a heart? Overall, I'd give his acting in this drama maybe a 7/10.

Onto the female lead. Li Qin is good as usual. She's in many historical dramas and always tends to play the character of an innocent clueless girl who, through many hardships and obstacles, becomes worldly and wise. Not much to complain about here -- her character is believable and familiar. There's nothing about this character that really surprised me. I"d give her a score of 8.5/10.

On to Ji Chong. His character made me crack up in the beginning. His mysterious and suave personality was often comedic relief when the relationship between the two main leads got particularly tense. He has jokes up his sleeves LMAO. I'd say he was a good opposition character to Bo Wang because they were both princes, but their personality could not be anymore different. Ji Chong was thoughtful, funny, and compassionate. The one complaint I have is that after he truly and fully accepted the role of being Jing Guo's prince again, his character was minimized into being just a romantic partner for the female lead. I can almost say that everything this character does is due to the simple reason of liking the female lead. That's really all there is to this character in the second half of the drama. It was disappointing to see a character I had such high hopes for become such a bland and one dimensional character. I don't really know if this was the script, or just because this was Xiao Zhan's first big role, but I wish there were more levels to his acting that would have fully fleshed out this character as a powerful prince of an entire country. I'd give his acting an 8/10

tldr: everything would have been fine and no misunderstandings would have happened if only the two main leads were honest with each other. I would not want to be the female lead character.

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